ADDRESSES 339 



signed him, when the lights of Pompeii went out eighteen 

 hundred years ago, will forever stand as the type of obedi- 

 ence even unto death. To desert his post was perhaps to 

 save his life. To stay was seemingly a needless sacrifice. 

 But duty triumphed over fear, and the world for a score of 

 centuries has been the brighter for his example. The dying 

 martyrs racked and tortured for their faith, with glazing 

 eye and quivering frame looking upward into heaven, prayed 

 God to bless their persecutors. "Another Christian dead," 

 was the contemptuous remark. But the eloquent Presbyter 

 of Carthage, catching the true meaning of this steadfast 

 adherence to duty, gazed down the long vistas of the com- 

 ing centuries and exclaimed: "The blood of martyrs is the 

 seed of the church." 



The Forty-sixth and Fifty-first Massachusetts Volun- 

 teers, on the very eve of being transported home, their 

 nine months' term of service having expired, learning that 

 Lee had crossed the Rappahannock and was in Pennsyl- 

 vania, offered their services by telegraph to the Secretary 

 of War and were accepted. Will any one dare to say that 

 this was a needless sacrifice ? No legal claim could hold 

 them Home with its thousand blessed memories was 

 before them every consideration of love and family was 

 urging their return. But duty triumphed over inclination, 

 intense loyalty over affection, and to-day a grateful and 

 united nation rises up and calls them blessed. 



There is a conventional morality that amounts to nothing 

 more than legality. It does nothing but what it can show 

 the warrant for. It is incapable of judging self-sacrifice. 

 In the high moments of a man's life it disappears alto- 

 gether. Duty takes command and has no thought of con- 



